Sat 5/15 @ 4PM
Cleveland Play House’s annual New Ground Theatre Festival takes on a very different look this year.
Instead of a sprawling, weeks-long series of performances, readings and discussions, it’s boiled down to a single, compact virtual evening called “Mapping New Ground,” featuring sneak peeks at five new plays-in-progress, commissioned by CPH that take Cleveland’s history and contemporary life and culture as their starting point.
The play excerpts, which premier on YouTube at 4pm, include George Brant’s Crooked River Burning, based on a novel by Mark Winegartner which features appearances by legendary Clevelanders such as Dorothy Fuldheim and Alan Freed; The Ghost Tour by Jessica Dickey, inspired by the now-vacant Variety Theater on Lorain and West 117th; I’m Back Nowby Charly Evon Simpson, based on Clevelander Sara Lucy Bagly, the last person prosecuted under the Fugitive Slave Act; Chelsea Marcantel’s Lake Erie Oubliette, an exploration of Cleveland’s ties to spiritualism; and Liébling by Vichet Chum.
Mapping New Ground: A Live Conversation on Zoom @ 7:30PM features the five playwrights in “an evening of free-flowing, off-the-cuff, LIVE conversation,” featuring their collaborators and special guests to give viewers still more insight into what is behind these playwrights’ latest works.
Go here for links to the events.